Agility is a good thing, no doubt, and the Agile Manifesto isn’t unreasonable. Compared to a straw-man practice called “Waterfall”, Agile is notably superior. Yet, so much of Agile as-practiced is deeply harmful, and I don’t really think that the Agile/Waterfall dichotomy is useful in the first place.

There’s a variety of Agile, called Scrum, that I’ve seen actually kill a company. By “kill”, I don’t mean “the culture wasn’t as good afterward”. Rather, I mean that its stock dropped by almost 90 percent in less than two years.

What is Agile?

Agile grew up in web consulting, where it had a certain amount of value: when dealing with finicky clients who don’t know what they want, one typically has to choose between one of two options. The first is to manage the client: get expectations set, charge appropriately for rework, and maintain a relationship of equality rather than submission…

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Published by fk2005

I was born in 1977 as the older identical twin. I grew up in Australia and Germany (which sure was a culture shock initially), studied in the UK, and now work in the dull but predictable field of financial services. I write a blog for my own amusement, and like most people on Wordpress, I secretly harbour grand plans to one day write a bestselling novel. I love to explore the world, which is probably related to my parents' decision to take us both on a 1-year excursion to hang out with the guys with long beards on the plains and in the mountains of Afghanistan. As we were six months old, it's the most interesting part of my life that I know nothing about.
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